{"id":13192,"date":"2011-09-15T02:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T07:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=13192"},"modified":"2011-09-14T23:51:54","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T04:51:54","slug":"military-atheists-offended-by-god-bless-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/15\/military-atheists-offended-by-god-bless-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Atheists Offended by “God Bless America”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Torpy of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers has complained over a poster in the halls of a Simi Valley<\/a> government building.<\/p>\n

The poster features a God Bless America \/ God Bless You prayer sandwich as well as a reference to Psalms 33 indicating Christian requirements for such a blessing.\u00a0 This display is primarily religious in nature, co-opting patriotism to promote their personal Christian beliefs.\u00a0 This is disrespectful to nontheistic military personnel…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting, isn’t it, that atheists are so intent on framing\u00a0an issue as\u00a0“Christian”\u00a0they continue to assign ‘exclusive Christian’ intent to things like passages from the Hebrew Bible — which is, of course, Jewish.<\/p>\n

It’s also fascinating that Torpy is so hypersensitive to religion that he thinks the phrase “God bless you” or “God bless America” “disregards atheist service members.”\u00a0 (He even said it violated the prohibition against “establishment\u00a0of religion.”)\u00a0 Simi Valley atheist Stuart Bechman went as far as to say if the City Council wouldn’t take it down, they needed to put one up “specifically honoring foxhole atheists.”<\/p>\n

Contrary to such an asinine assertion, one does not have to appropriate the language of a group to “regard” or otherwise show it respect. Saying “God bless you” does not “honor” one group over another.<\/p>\n

That Torpy and Bechman do not believe in God or like the use of the word “God” in those who speak to them does not diminish the respect behind the well-wishes.\u00a0 The military went for years yearning for the open support of the American public.\u00a0 When it is offered, Torpy gets offended at how <\/em>its offered?\u00a0 How magnanimous.<\/p>\n

“Merry Christmas<\/a>,” anyone?<\/p>\n

An appropriate response, rather than revulsion, would be “thank you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Torpy of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers has complained over a poster in the halls of a Simi Valley government building. The poster features a God Bless America \/ God Bless You prayer sandwich as well as a reference to Psalms 33 indicating Christian requirements for such a blessing.\u00a0 This display is primarily religious in nature, co-opting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[20,96,4,148,2213,253,39,2,17,10,171,2212,2211],"class_list":["post-13192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-atheism","tag-christian","tag-churchandstate","tag-foxhole","tag-god-bless","tag-jason-torpy","tag-jewish","tag-military","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-simi-valley","tag-stuart-bechman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}